Mantius, Peter. Shell Game: A Story of Banking, Spies, Lies, Politics, and
the Arming of Saddam Hussein. New York: St.Martin's Press, 1995. 288 pages.
When the feds arrested Christopher Drogoul in 1991, the manager of the
Atlanta branch of the Italy's Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL), they charged
him with 347 felony counts. The story was that Drogoul had hoodwinked his
Italian bosses and funneled billions to Saddam Hussein. The prosecutor, Gale
McKenzie, was given her lines by U.S. intelligence insiders, and tried to
place all of the blame on Drogoul. The bosses at BNL were only too happy to
go along, and hired lawyers with close connections to the prosecution. But
judge Marvin Shoob saw that the government was pulling a fast one. It was
attempting to blame Drogoul for what amounted to an off-the-books effort by
Fortune 500 corporations and U.S. policymakers to recruit Iraq as an ally,
by giving them credits that were used to purchase arms.
Congressman Henry Gonzalez, who is a tenacious muckraker when his
targets are Republicans, tried to make hay out of Iraqgate in 1992. But
Shoob was sufficiently outspoken that he had to give the Drogoul case to
another judge, whereupon Drogoul cut a deal and ended up serving 33 months.
There was a bit of BNL fallout back in Italy, and an Iraqgate scandal
in Britain, while in the U.S. the story was already dead. The fact that
our media had been so unabashedly enthusiastic over the high-tech death
and destruction of the Gulf War may have had something to do with it.
ISBN 0-312-13169-0
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